Seen in the audience at a Richard Milward/Sarah Hall reading

I decided to come out of retirement and play a couple of songs as "Gee Henry" at a British-themed Richard Milward/ Sarah Hall reading. Here were three ladies in the audience. I won't give their names, because I work with them, but I love them! I want to hang out with them after-work, but my one invitation thus far, to a dance thing at Juilliard, illicited no replies from any of the three ladies. I will keep trying, though. As a publicist, and as a middle-aged man in the gay mileu that is NYC, I am quite accustomed to rejection! The reading was held at the Slipper Room, a venue that is heavy on burlesque performances. As a nod to the venue's history, I wore a black, see-through shirt made by Helmut Lang. (I've had that shirt for ten years and have only worn it twice! What price, haute couteur?). And what a strange evening it was. I chose to sing two songs about topics that I and the authors share a fascination for: drugs and skin. And I refrained from over-sharing about my people (the Antiguans) long and complicated relationship with the British, which was probably for the best.

My new best friend

Yolanda and Cherita took me to Cafeteria for my birthday, and there I met my new best friend. I forgot his name already, but all I have to do is return to work in a week and I'll see it on the card he gave me. I think he works for a watch company. I will email him a link to his post, and then he will be mine, he will be mine forever. We'll play with each other's respirators in the gay nursing home in our future. He was such a queen, but I do love that so! I'm not one of those gays who seeks out masculine (read: no personality) gays to befriend. Most of my dearest friends are ladies, and my mother was my first role model, so of course I seek out ladylike men in my adulthood. As long as they are poorer than me, that is. Nothing is more annoying than a ladylike man dripping with jewels and finery, outshining my own ruined grandeur. Anyway, my new best friend's tablemates had no boundaries, just like me, so our tables became one. On this day after Thanksgiving, my prayer for the world is that all its tables become one, world without end, amen. :)

Thomas's shoes

Have you ever befriended someone who was so NICE that they made you feel evil, by comparison? Well, I have. Case in point, my friend Thomas. These are his shoes. I was spending a significant amount of time stalking him at his place of work, just trying to bask in his niceness - as a sort of vacation from my usual evil thoughts, evil ways. I lurked on his Facebook page and noted with great interest the images of him in the arms of another fellow. Finally, with great trepidation, I asked him if he was into the young ladies or the young fellows. Not because I wanted to be considered, mind you (I'm too evil), but just so that I could feel bad that I was missing out. Turns out, I'm not missing out! He's into the young ladies. Can't you tell from his shoes? (See? I'm evil. :)) At dinner recently, he told me, wisely, that he wasn't interested in casual sex with the ladies because then there wasn't a connection. I was baffled by this. Baffled! I mean, isn't that the point?!

My novel

Did you know I was working on a novel? Did you care? I decided earlier in the year that, whenever I feel like saying something inappropriate, I would write a page in my novel instead. I have 135 pages now! This is me tap-tap-tapping away on my tale of a young man who moves to California and goes on a diet - both from food and from people. I was calling it "The Omnivore," but everyone keeps warning me that that title brings up too many associations with Michael Pollan now, so I'm all ears if you have an alternate suggestion? I'm wearing Woolland in this picture - it's not my typical sort of blouse, but it was on sale.

Phillip Lim show

Kendra, Kateri and I went to the Phillip Lim show at the tail-end of Fashion Week. We went because we got free tickets - but then it turned out that it wasn't a real Fashion Week event! It was an event for American Express cardmembers, and anyone could attend! They just had to buy a ticket. Ugh, I certainly felt less fashionable when I realized what the show was. And the clothing of the people brushing up next to me suddenly felt like it was made of dirty burlap, or sandpaper. Sandpaper! But it was still mildly interesting, though I wished they hadn't had Andre Leon Talley doing a "q&a" with Phillip Lim beforehand. A q&a about fashion! What is there to say? I felt like I was watching two drowning men try to convince an already-full helicopter to throw down a ladder by trying to convince the crew that they would fly the helicopter in an elliptical course, rather than in a straight line. And Andre Leon Talley needs to take the porkchop out of the frying pan, as Roxanne Shante might say. Still, we were cheered to see that there were several black models in the roster that night; here's a picture of one of them. Work it, sistah!

Coco Before Chanel

Maggie, Michelle, Patty and I went to see "Coco Before Chanel" after work. This is the sort of outing I love to be a part of - friends, peers, and former co-workers going to relax and just be together, after a long, grinding week at the office. Everyone was sort of gritting their teeth before the movie, but then it was so slow and boring and beautiful, we were able to lose ourselves in it and emerge in a new state. Audrey Tatou's performance was so amazing. And I totally related to the Coco Chanel character. I feel as hard-edged as she was made to look in that movie, all the time. Nothing makes me relax except playing with my cat and going to the movies. In real life, Coco Chanel's hard-edgedness made her a completely reprehensible person, complete with Nazi collaborations, but that is the magic of the movies, isn't it? We can relate to a little piece of a person, or a person's depiction in a script, and forget about the rest. Literally: glamour! And a little popcorn and seltzer. After the movie, as we all walked east towards our homes and trains, I told Patty, Maggie and Michelle how lucky I felt to have been a part of something as special as Harcourt was. They felt that way too.

This shirt makes me look fat!

After a long day of stressin' and confessin', nothing makes a middle-aged man like myself feel more comfortable than going out to Queens and spending the night in his dead mother's bed. I wanted to take a picture of the bed, but when I saw the picture, I realized how fat my shirt makes me look. Good! No sense hiding it. Everyone always warned me not to wear vertical stripes, but at my age, my inhibitions (and my sanity) begin to gently fall away. I got this shirt at Uniqlo, during a phase where I was planning to go down to Uniqlo once a week and buy one blouse, so that by the end of the summer, my t-shirt palette would be completely refreshed. That plan worked so well, but, as usual, only for one week. Fortunately, in this picture, my camera-phone's flash obscures my face, so that when Wilhelmina Models (middle-aged division) scours the Internet for its next not-so-fresh face, they won't know it's me.